Under The Broken Scale of Justice

written by Nyo' Wakai

The Law and My Times

This book explores the latent and sometimes overt undercurrents that have shaped the judicial history of Cameroon since the United Nations Trusteeship period. It is an insightful account by a critical observer privileged to serve as Director of Public Prosecutions and a judge in a post-independence context characterized by dual and often conflictual legal systems inspired by French and English colonialism.

Justice Nyo’Wakai demonstrates how the conflict of judicial concepts, procedures and usages have led to the Francophone judicial system trying to impose itself on the Anglophone judicial system in Cameroon. Often reduced to toothless bulldogs by new constitutional dispensations informed largely by the French colonial legacy and Francophone realities, Anglophones have bemoaned the independence of the Judiciary identified with their Anglo-Saxon heritage. In the face of such domination and the highhandedness of the Executive, only mature cool headedness and the ability to bend over backwards on the part of Anglophone legal practitioners have contained the explosive situation and allowed for a gradual evolution of the Judicial System in Cameroon.

Nyo' Wakai

Justice Nyo’ Wakai is a former judge of the Supreme Court and founding member of the Social Democratic Front (SDF) of Cameroon. Member of the Cameroon Bar Council and of the Canadian Bar Association, he currently heads the Bamenda-based Monie, Wakai & Associates Law Firm. Justice Nyo’Wakai was the legal consultant to the UN International Commission for the Côte d’Ivoire in 2001, and has been active on human rights and conflict resolution. His other books include Inside the Fence: Reminiscences of a Detainee, and The Willing Servant, a biographical life of the Rt. Rev. Jeremiah C. Kangsen, which he co-authored with Dr. Walters Mbu.